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Help for lonely hearts

Local launches website devoted to dating education
1507date
Matched Up A local entrepreneur's website aims to help men and women couple up with useful tips on better dating.

It’s the single person’s least favourite time of year again – Valentine’s Day.

If you’re one of the many cupid-haters who curses every time you pass by plush toys and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates lining the shelves of stores, but secretly wishes you had a special someone, you may want to consider a few lessons in love.

A local entrepreneur has developed a new website to provide just that. Neal Talbot is president and founder of Attraction All-Star Enterprises, and recently launched a new website, All Star Dating Tips (www.allstardatingtips.com) to help people of any age and at any stage of the dating game.

“The goal I had when I set out to do this was just to help millions of men and women have happier, healthier dating lives,” said Talbot. “The reason I got into doing this site, and into the dating industry, was the fact that I had no idea what I was doing probably four years ago.”

A journalist by trade, Talbot came back from an assignment in Africa with a critical and mysterious illness.

“I was down to about 130 pounds from about 180, ghostly pale, had lost some of my vision so I had to wear glasses. I just looked awful, and I was afraid that when I got back into the dating world that I would do just awfully,” he said.

Once he recovered from his near-death experience he turned to the web for dating advice, but found most of the material wasn’t very helpful.

“They teach you how to go after the one night stands instead of actually how to develop lasting connections with the opposite sex,” he said.

Instead, Talbot’s free website focuses on educating people about dating, and making the entire experience less intimidating.

“Dating can be absolutely terrifying, horrifying when you don’t know what you’re doing because you do have to make yourself vulnerable to a large extent in dating, with someone you don’t know, and that especially today seems to be really difficult for the majority of men and women,” Talbot said.

Even before becoming ill, Talbot found dating was a hit or miss experience – he never really had a plan for a date, and after talking to others while doing research for his site he discovered many had the same approach.

“I can remember being in Whistler and asking that to a guy and he said, ‘I just get drunk and hope for the best,’” Talbot said with a chuckle.

Talbot says he has heard many dating horror stories through his research, and even experienced a few firsthand, including dates that still wore their wedding bands and people who “talked as quickly as hummingbirds on speed.”

“The key is to learn from those experiences and keep going,” he said.

Born and raised in the Whistler area, Talbot says there are definitely some unique challenges to dating here, starting with the fact that many people are here for a good time, not a long time.

“Whistler is a different beast in that fact that there are so many single visitors, you get a lot younger crowd … and you tend to get a lot more people that are of an age where they have absolutely no clue,” he said.

But he stresses that it is still possible to have a healthy dating life if you’re a local.

“When it comes to Whistler, stay out of the bars if you’re looking for somebody… they did a recent study for Maxim Magazine, and they found that only 0.2 per cent of people actually find their husbands or wives, or girlfriends or boyfriends, in a bar.”

Talbot has managed to secure some impressive advertisers, including large online dating companies Match.com and Lavalife.com, as well as online retailers like eBay.

Getting advertisers on board wasn’t difficult, because Talbot says there is actually a shortage of quality dating information available online.

“Everything’s just in tiny pieces, so instead of say getting three to five pages of information on a certain topic, like you do on my site, most sites just give you four to six paragraphs on a certain topic, like body language,” he said. “You really can’t develop any sort of skill set out of those few paragraphs.”

But Talbot says his new site isn’t about making money – he plans to use the income generated through advertising and the sale of the online e-book to keep the site up and running.

He decided to launch his site to the public today, Feb. 14, because he hopes singles may be inspired to improve their dating skills so they won’t be alone when Valentine’s Day rolls around next year.

“Valentine’s Day is the most romantic day of the year,” he said. “But for a lot of people, especially if you’re single, Valentine’s Day is a day of dread, it’s not a day you look forward to.”